


Like A Hemisphere

by andyouknowitis



Series: Certain Calculations [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 10:20:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3064244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andyouknowitis/pseuds/andyouknowitis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a comic book/superhero lover and lifelong fan of all things Marvel to boot I was never not gonna love this show. I fell in love with these two within about 0.7 seconds of them appearing onscreen. They are utterly adorable and fairly make my heart sing, even when they’re breaking it. This is a Jemma POV response fic to 'The Hub' episode.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like A Hemisphere

He hadn’t eaten the sandwich.

She knew her biochemistry. Top of her class after all. She had an excellent barometer for this kind of thing. She knew all the traits that related to memory recall. None of which he had displayed. No dilation of pupils. No glance opposing his dominant hand. Not a sausage. And she knew Fitz. She knew the exact silly smile he got when he’d eaten his sandwich. It was partly why she made it for him so very often. So she could see that particular smile. He hadn’t eaten it, she didn’t know precisely why he hadn’t. Undoubtedly there was some very good reason, probably involving  _Agent Grant Ward_ (she always did the voice in her head, couldn’t help it really). So he hadn’t eaten it, but he’d told her that he had.

She knew why.

She was so very proud of him. So _proud_. It all but burst out of her. She wanted to shout and tell everyone how utterly, beautifully, brilliant he was. Everyone who didn’t laugh when he told a story wrong. Everyone who under-estimated him. Everyone at the academy who’d wondered why she’d befriended the decidedly sarcastic Scot with a knack for having a crush on completely the wrong person and saying very likely the entirely wrong thing. Everyone who just didn’t  _get_  him. She wanted to tell every single person in their graduating class who’d laughed at him when he’d passed out in their anatomy classes that Leopold Fitz was just a wonderful and fantastically  _brilliant_  genius.

He’d come so far. He was so  _brave_. So much more so because he was so often afraid. Of the variables. The unknown. He was more methodical than she was. He knew where things were supposed to go and he expected them to work in just the way he knew they were meant to. Not that she didn’t have an element of that within her own process. She respected the order of things, the system, but she also embraced those, oh what would one call them, those rogue elements, a little more easily than he did. Not that she liked breaking rules as a…well…rule. She wasn’t completely at ease with being, as reckless, quite frankly, as Skye could be, in the quest for knowledge, and she certainly would never be anywhere near as ah, amazing,  _very much_   _amazing,_ as The Cavalry _._ And really who was because  _really._  But she was a  _scientist_. She  _liked_  calculated risk, measuring up those variables, looking at the outcomes, knowing something could be dangerous, and doing it anyway. Like deciding to join this little flying circus, as he liked to call it.

She knew when he was afraid of something, so she knew when he was being brave. He really was her hero. She’d known that he didn’t believe her when she’d told him that. He was brave because he did it anyway. He’d followed her. He fixed things with her. He ate her sandwiches. When they were having their sixth argument of the morning, and he was lamenting, yet again, that he’d ever left the little mobile lab, back on the ground, _where it was perfectly SAFE and satisfying Jemma, thank you_ , she wanted to tell him that as much as he’d done it for her, she had done it for him. To show him what he could be when he just believed in himself. Oh, not his gift for engineering or his genius with mechanics, but to show him that as brilliant as he was inside the lab, he was also capable of being just as fantastic outside of it. She’d never be sorry that she’d finagled them into the aforementioned flying circus. They were exactly were they were supposed to be.

Her only regret was before…after what she’d thought would be their last experiment together. The look she’d put in his eyes when she’d….when she’d stepped off the plane. She’d known it was probably selfish of her to look back, in that final moment before she…well. But she’d needed to, not just to see him, and yes she’d needed to see him, but really she’d looked to see that he was okay, after she’d had to hit him with that fire extinguisher. And okay maybe she’d known he’d be okay, bar some predictable aching and a rather nasty bruise (again biochem, naturally she knew all the pressure points of the body and just where to apply said pressure for a particular outcome), but she was hardly feeling completely rational in that moment, to be fair. She’d still argue her overall response was rational. She was following protocol. So they didn’t have to.

But she’d looked back. And she would never forget the look she’d put on his face. She never wanted to see  _that_  look again. And yet..she was glad that she had him to look back at. Because when he’d left on what was, she was sorry to say, a far too dangerous mission, for someone who wasn’t even  _approaching_ level seven yet, he looked back at her too. Because, maybe then, more so than before, she’d known that he was realising what she’d known for quite some time. That they were connected. In their very thoughts. In some some beautiful, effervescent, tangled-up way, that felt like magic but was probably science.

_Biochemistry._

Especially when they were near each other, as if she had a string somewhere under her left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of his, and yes, okay, she knew she was being a little bit ridiculous and quoting  _Jane Eyre_ now, and he probably wasn’t anyone’s idea of Mr Rochester (because  _really_ , even the idea of him with a wife locked up in an attic…and okay not the point, Simmons)…but….that was how it felt. Admittedly, her brain could run away from her at times. Another reason why Fitz’s particular brand of caustic commentary fit her so very well. Her thoughts always wove their way back around the steady baseline of his. It was like he was her control, in a world of ever changing variables.

Maybe she’d fussed over him a bit too much before he’d left on his mission, but she was the one who’d brought him here. Maybe the one who was keeping him here. She needed him to be okay. And now look at him. He  _was._  And it was wonderful. Yes, he’d never be  _Agent Grant Ward._  But she didn’t want him to be. He didn’t need to be. He was something better. He was Leo Fitz. And he was rather marvellous, just as he was.

She was still better at impressions though.

And making sandwiches.

*


End file.
